The present invention relates to a data transfer display method of connecting an information communication terminal such as a portable telephone to a network such as the Internet and using information on the network.
Various limitations are imposed on portable telephones. For example, the display sizes are small, and the performance of CPUs (Central Processing Units) and memory capacities are limited. A browser perfectly conforming to HTML (HyperText Markup Language) cannot be installed in such a portable telephone. For this reason, to browse contents prepared on a server in a widearea network such as the Internet by using a portable telephone, a micro-browser optimized for portable telephones must be used. In addition, contents must be described by using a simple language designed for the micro-browser.
As such a network connection protocol for portable telephones, WAP (Wireless Application Protocol) is available. By using a WAP portable telephone, the user can connect a portable terminal such as a portable telephone to the Internet or the like with simple operation, and can use electronic mail and other contents. As a description language for contents used in WAP, WML (Wireless Markup Language) is available. If contents described in WML are prepared in a server, the user can display/browse the contents with the micro-browser by connecting a WAP portable terminal to the server through the Internet.
WML is based on XML (Extensible Markup Language) that can freely define tags. A tag is a reserved word, which is used to adjust a text and describe a link destination of a file. WML includes the concepts of “Card” and “Deck”. A card (unit display data) corresponds to 1-page data. Only one card is displayed on the display of a portable telephone at once.
A deck (unit transfer data) is a collection of a plurality of cards, and serves as a unit for a portable telephone in downloading per access. If, therefore, contents are created such that a card to be displayed next exists in the same deck, the next card can be quickly displayed without accessing the link destination again. As a consequence, according to the mechanism of WML, the number of times of connection to the server can be decreased, and the load on the gateway can be reduced.
In displaying the above cards, when the same card is to be browsed a plurality of number of times in browsing operation, a plurality of cards 11 can be continuously displayed and browsed by using the “go” command or “prev” command, as shown in FIG. 4, according to the specifications of the current WAP.
In displaying such contents, e.g., banners for advertisements, the user may use a special card 22 which he/she wants to display every time he/she turns to a card 21 or display it once for a plurality of number of times he/she turns to the card 21. To execute screen browsing shown in FIG. 5, one deck in contents prepared in a server is described as indicated by description sample 1 as follows:
Description Sample 1. . . . .<wml><card id=“card1”><do type=“ACCEPT”label=“Next”><go href=“#specialcard1” /></do><p>CARD 1 <br/>Press ACCEPT to go to Next Card></p></card><card id=“specialcard1”><do type=“ACCEPT”label=“Next”><go href=“#card2”/></do><to type=“PREV”label=“Prev”><prv/></do><p>SPECIAL CARD <br/>Press ACCEPT to go to Next Card <br/>Press PREV to go to Previous Card</p></card><card id=“card2”><do type= “ACCEPT” label= “Next”><go href=“ #specialcard2”/></do><do type=“PREV”label=“Prev”><prev/></do><p>CARD 2 <br/>Press ACCEPT to go to Next Card <br/>Press PREV to go to Previous Card</p></card><card id=“ specialcard2”><do type=“ACCEPT”label=“Next”><go href=“ #card3” /></do><do type =“PREV”label=“ Prev”><prev/></do><p>SPECIAL CARD <br/>Press ACCEPT to go to Next Card <br/>Press PREV to go to Previous Card</p></card><card id=“card3”><do type=“PREV”label=“Prev”><prev/></do><p>CARD 3 <br/>Press PREV to go to Previous Card</p></card></wml>. . . . .
The deck described in description example 1 described above is displayed on the screen of the portable terminal in the order of a→b→c→d→e, as shown in FIG. 6.
As descried above, however, if there are special cards 22 which the user wants to automatically display, a plurality of special cards 22 must be arranged in a series of cards 21 before the cards are displayed on the browser in the portable terminal according to the current WAP protocol, as shown in FIG. 5. To display the special cards 22 arranged in the series of cards 21, different IDs must be assigned to the respective special cards 22, and card data corresponding to the number of times the user is made to browse cards must be sent out from the server to the terminal. The same applies to a case wherein the special cards 22 have the same contents. For this reason, in the prior art, one deck received by a portable terminal contains a large amount of wasteful data.
In some case, after a given card is displayed, another card in a deck having another URL is displayed, and the browser returns to the initial card. In this case, according to the current WAP standards, the browser must describe the URL of the previous (link source) URL in the deck at the link destination. For this reason, the user cannot refer to the same deck from different decks.
As described above, in conventional data communication using WAP or the like, data received by an information communication terminal such as a portable telephone contains large wasteful data, resulting in an increase in the load on the network.